"Wu allegedly reviewed applications for companies in which she owned more than $300,000 and $140,000 worth of stock, respectively. She also allegedly reviewed applications from commercial competitors of a company in which she held more than $900,000 in stock. These holdings dwarf the regulatory de minimis thresholds that permit patent examiners to hold limited stock positions in companies whose applications they review."
"Under 5 C.F.R. § 2640.202, an examiner may hold up to $15,000 in stock in a single company whose application they are reviewing, or up to $25,000 in aggregate across companies within the industry sector covered by their art unit. Wu's alleged holdings exceeded these thresholds by orders of magnitude."
"Two years ago, the Commerce Department's Office of Inspector General issued a report concluding that the USPTO and the Department of Commerce 'did not effectively administer the Department's ethics program to protect against potential conflicts of interest by patent examiners.' That report, triggered by hotline referrals, found systemic failures at every level of the ethics oversight process."
Daxin Wu, a USPTO patent examiner, agreed to pay $500,000 to resolve allegations that she examined at least nine patent applications from companies in which she held significant financial interests between January 2019 and May 2022. Wu's stock holdings in these companies ranged from $140,000 to over $900,000, vastly exceeding federal regulatory limits that permit examiners to hold only up to $15,000 in a single company or $25,000 aggregate within an industry sector. This settlement follows a 2024 Commerce Department Inspector General report revealing systemic failures in USPTO ethics oversight, which found that 26 of 73 sampled examiners had unidentified financial conflicts of interest.
#uspto-ethics-violations #patent-examiner-conflicts-of-interest #financial-disclosure-requirements #regulatory-compliance
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